"Build
Your Own" Smaller 'Starter' CastlesA
Guide to Fairly Easy Medieval Castle ProjectsThis
is NOT an official Lego site

I receive
numerous requests from novice but enthusiastic potential
castle builders for information and suggestions about
smaller castles on which they would like to hone their
skills while they are slowly gathering the Lego® bricks
necessary for larger projects. When I started building
model castles in 1986, I had relatively few gray Lego
bricks, not a clue about how to build a castle, and
pretty limited research information - but my enthusiasm
resulted in 23 castles the first three years. Even today
my mind boggles at the notion that I began by building a
little model of the triangular Caerlaverock in southern
Scotland out of square and rectangular Legos.

Many
of my subsequent castles were fairly small and easy to
build - I'd have had to retire to build 8 castles a year
nowadays! But my earlier projects gave me wonderful
experience, and I heartily recommend a few small castles
for 'practice'. Many of the castles I love the most, and
therefore built early, I have redone on a larger and
often more accurate scale, with only a 'number' and one
photo of the "First Try" available on the
castle's page...

So in this
section I'm going to try to provide more pictures of my
early castles, and the plans for them, to assist new
builders. Remember that my early plans were often
primitive, and side elevations often non-existant or done
on a squatty 1:1 scale, as compared to my current and
more accurate 1:1 1/5th scale [5/16th inch wide versus 3/8th
inch tall]. Please email me if you have any specific
problems or questions...AND I'll be happy to post a
picture of any of your completed castle projects on a new
Castle Builders' Page, yet to be created since I have no
pictures from anyone to date!

The
possibilites are listed below. Remember to see the Main
Page for photos and plans of the actual castles. And also
don't forget the several other small castles and towers
on the Main Page in addition to Provins. They are Etampes
& Houdan (also in France), Castell Coch (Wales),
Chipchase, Appleby & Clifford's Tower (England),
Clara & Ballytarsna (Ireland) and Claypotts,
Amisfield, Elphinstone & Levan (Scotland). Good luck!!

#4
Château de Provins This castle
is available from the main page under 'France'. I have
not been able to design a larger version in Lego that's
any better than the original. The roofs of my model are
cut from heavy file folder paper, magic-markered to look
like a roof, and taped into an octagonal "cone".
The tower roofs I made for Muiderslot [The Netherlands]
are the next step in roof design.

#5
Castle Rising You'll notice
a significant difference between this first model of the
Keep and the second, located on the Main Page (in
addition to the neat detail on the larger version). In
the model here the height of the forebuilding, reached by
the protected stairway, matches that of the Keep - also
matching the photograph to the right. A reference, which
I now cannot locate, stated that the third floor of the
forebuilding was a later addition, and plain and ugly to
boot, so I left it out of the later model.

South View

West View

1986 Lego
Plan

Lego Top
Down Plan

#6
Newcastle-upon-Tyne This castle
is so classic I couldn't help building it again when I
had more Legos, but I always liked this little model. It
could be built to split in half, revealing all the floors,
but that would take a lot more bricks (and defeat the
purpose of building a small starter castle?) I would now
use 45º 2x2 double convex bricks for the outer corners
of the turrets - I had none in light gray when I first
built this model.

Southeast
View

East View

Northeast
View

West View

Top View

Entrance
View

Ground
Floor Plan

1st Floor
Plan

2nd Floor
Plan

3rd Floor
Plan

4th Floor
Plan

Battlement
Plan

#7
Nunney Tower This castle,
like #4 Provins, was also capped with cardboard roofs
magic-markered red in an attempt to match the red of the
Lego roof bricks. Note that the second model used black
sloped bricks, then more readily available.

Northwest
View

Northeast
View

1986 Lego
Plans

Roof Plan
Details

#8
Rochester Keep This castle
has always been one of my favorites, with its tall
turrets and impressive forebuilding, entered by a
drawbridge. The first model (see below) incorporated more
than three dozen gray wall sections, allowing
construction of a tower which did not overwhelm my then
moderate supply of gray bricks. It also allowed "stones"
to appear on the walls of the Keep here and there.

Northwest
View

Southeast
View

North View

View from
above

1986 Lego
Plan

West
Elevation

North
Elevation

East
Elevation

South
Elevation

Roof Cross
Section

#10
Hermitage Castle This castle
is so impressive, both in person and on the printed page,
that I was pleased to build it a second time - but my
first effort was one of my best early castles. A model
built by you should probably utilize black roof tiles.
Only red slopes were available in large numbers in lots
of different sizes and shapes in 1987.

Southeast
View

Northeast
View

1987 Lego
Plan

1987 Top
Down

#14
Dover Keep My only
regret about this early model is that I didn't own the
gray 75 degree 2x3x2 double convex slopes necessary for
the batter around the base of the tower. I substituted
black, which I had, and it just looked dorky...

Southeast
View

Northeast
View

1988
Lego Plan

Northwest
Elevation

#22
Bolton CastleThis
castle is pretty massive for the beginners section, even
though the second attempt was on a really magnificent
scale. However, Bolton is a powerful and enticing project
in any size, and might work really well as a third or
fourth castle.

East
Northeast View

South View

1988 Lego
Plan

East
Elevation

#31
Bunratty CastleThis
castle was visited a couple years ago by my sister-in-law
Elaine and her daughter Kim. They were kind enough to
bring me not only snapshots of the castle, but the
cutaway placemat (heavily "doctored" by me)
which is on the Main Page. There are medieval banquets
here "knightly" as well as many weddings at the
castle. I apologize for two puns in one paragraph!